Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te welcomed what he called the “largest-ever” delegation of foreign lawmakers to Taiwan, stressing the island’s importance as a bulwark against an expansionist China.
“This demonstrates the support and the value various other countries place on Taiwan,” Lai said at the fourth annual meeting Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, which 49 representatives from 23 countries, including Japan, Australia and France, attended.
IPAC is an international group of lawmakers promoting democracy who are concerned about China’s official policy positions and track record on human rights.
Lai said the gathering “sends an important message to democratic countries around the world.”
“Maintaining democracy requires unity, and we must protect democracy together,” Lai added.
Lai also said that Taiwan would work with other democracies to protect democracy from “the threat of authoritarian expansionism.”
“China’s threat to any country is a threat to the whole world,” Lai said, adding that China “uses diplomatic kidnapping, economic coercion, internet attacks, and spreading false and fake things to continuously muddle matters and seek to undermine regional peace and stability.”
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Media reported that China attempted to prevent lawmakers from countries including Colombia, Slovakia, Bolivia, Bosnia and North Macedonia, from attending the conference.
IPAC has long been despised by China and it has imposed sanctions on some of its members. In 2021, the group was targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, according to a U.S. indictment unsealed this year.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said IPAC “has no credibility at all” and repeated its assertion that Taiwan is part of Chinese territory.
“China firmly opposes any form of official exchanges between countries with diplomatic ties with China and the Taiwan authorities,” the ministry said in a statement.
China regards Taiwan as a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary. The democratic island has been self-governing since it effectively separated from mainland China in 1949 after the Chinese civil war.
China has dialed up diplomatic and economic pressure on the island since former president Tsai Ing-wen’s administration came to power in 2016, as Tsai and her party refuse to acknowledge that Taiwan and the mainland belonged to “one China.” Lai, a former mayor of Tainan, is also viewed with suspicion by China’s ruling Communist Party.
China has successfully swayed several of Taipei’s diplomatic allies to shift their recognition to Beijing. As a result, only 12 countries maintain official diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.